Providing value by prioritizing requirements throughout software product development State of practice and suitability of prioritization methods

State of practice and suitability of prioritization methods Licentiate thesis submitted for official examination for the degree of Licentiate in Technology. ABSTRACT OF LICENTIATE THESIS Author Date Laura Lehtola 5.9.2006 Pages 53 + publications Title of thesis Providing value by prioritizing requirements throughout software product development-State of practice and suitability of prioritization methods Professorship Professorship Code Software engineering T-76 Supervisor Tomi Männistö Instructor Marjo Kauppinen For a software company product development is an investment that should provide value for customers and end-users. Providing value for these stakeholders is a lifeline for the sales of the product and via that to the business of the software company. In order to provide value, a company must be able to select the most valuable requirements to be implemented in each product release. In the software product business these decisions cannot be negotiated with just one customer. According to earlier studies, the prioritization of requirements is not an easy task. Extensive description concerning the challenges involved and analysis of their root causes has, however, not been introduced. In addition, the literature offers methods for prioritization, but these methods are not widely used. In this research, we investigated the existing mechanisms that software companies operating in the product business use in order to prioritize features and requirements during product development. In addition, we clarified the challenges involved in prioritization and in practices that aim to address these challenges. This was done in order to understand the problem area better and through that to provide a basis for improving the existing practices. In addition, we evaluated two requirements prioritization methods from the requirements engineering literature in software development projects to get information about their suitability for market-driven software development. In practice, requirements are prioritized in many phases of product development. On the product management level, requirements are prioritized mainly from the business viewpoint and allocated to a few forthcoming releases so that the time horizon for future planning is open. The steps for the near future are planned in more detail and those for the remote future in less detail. On the project level, requirements are again prioritized into an indicative implementation order based on e.g. the skills available and the maturity of the requirements. The practices used are mainly informal, but most often involve evaluating the potential business value of requirements versus their implementation costs. In addition, companies aim to utilize their product development resources …